Spare change: The “I wear your granddad’s clothes” edition

Readers, you’re about to witness me use dated vocabulary, talk about gas prices, and reveal my love of the elbow patch. You might wonder if it’s actually me, a gal who wasn’t alive for the Carter administration, and not a curmudgeonly old man. I have no explanation for how or why this theme emerged, other than that I’ve been middle-aged since I was 17.

Let’s just get to it.

Wedding costs on the rise — for guests

It’s not news that weddings are expensive affairs, averaging a $28,000 price tag. But even if you think that number is nuts, even if your own wedding started with a flight to Vegas or the justice of the peace, it’s likely that wedding costs have hit your pocketbook too. (Does anyone still say pocketbook? I digress…) MarketWatch reports that 43 percent of Americans have declined to attend a wedding for financial reasons, and costs for guests are on the rise:

“The average cost of attending a wedding — including expenses like hotel stays, bachelor and bachelorette parties, child care, and party attire — reached roughly $539 this year, up 60% from 2012, according to an American Express survey. …the pressure to attend the wedding of a close friend or family member can be so strong that guests will go into debt to be there: 36% of people say they’ve gone into debt to attend a friend’s wedding, according to the American Consumer Credit Counseling, a non-profit financial advisory in Auburndale, Mass.”

What’s more, some etiquette gurus say that even if you fend off the pressure to attend, you’re still on the hook for a gift.

The high price of rent-to-own

How does this deal sound? You can’t afford a couch, so I’ll let you rent-to-own one. At double its retail value. With an APR of 100 percent. Yeah, not so great. But that’s the deal most people sign up for when they rent-to-own. CNN Money reports:

“Since the financial crisis began, the number of rent-to-own customers has surged 50%, from 2.8 million in 2007 to 4.2 million last year, according to industry group the Association of Progressive Rental Organizations (APRO). Annual revenue among retailers in the industry spiked 35% during that time — to $7.9 billion last year. And as of last year, there were nearly 9,000 rent-to-own stores in the United States.”

It’s not a terrible option if you’re just renting the stuff for a few months; but if your plan is to rent-to-own, you’ll pay double what the item would have cost at retail. Double, people! Forget that. Save up for the couch and buy a few bean bag chairs in the meantime. Also a lava lamp and some 70s rock posters. Yeah, baby.

Some of these are obvious no-nos, but I’m guilty of others, like carrying a check in my wallet, just in case I need one. I also have multiple credit cards, but as the article points out, “the more cards you carry, the more you’ll have to cancel if your wallet is lost or stolen.” As for receipts, “a crafty ID thief can use the limited credit card info and merchant information on receipts to phish for your remaining numbers.” Those guys. If only they’d use their powers for good.

“Today’s average price for regular unleaded gasoline — $3.19 per gallon — is the lowest since February 22, 2011. The national average price at the pump is seven cents cheaper than one week ago, 16 cents cheaper than one month ago and 25 cents less than the same date last year. Prices have dropped 41 cents since September 1 and have fallen on 64 of 71 days during this span.”

The national average is expected to continue to fall, with many places (like my home state of Tejas) seeing prices below $3 per gallon. Now let’s discuss the weather…

Homeownership kills the labor market, study finds

Could countries that enable “the dream” of homeownership be killing their own job market? That’s the finding of a study from the University of Warwick and Dartmouth College. From Phys.org:

“Rises in home-ownership in a US state are followed by substantial increases in the unemployment rate in the state, a fall in the mobility of its workers, a rise in commuting times, and a drop in the rate of new business formation. The authors are careful to check, and they replicate, their findings for different periods of US history. The release of their work coincides with a new European study, done independently, which draws the same conclusions.”

The researchers believe that homeownership makes people more likely to stay put and to commute longer distances, which increases traffic for everyone and leads to “not in my backyard” efforts that block new businesses.

I’m a homeowner and I never, ever, ever want to move, so I get how that could cause those issues for the labor market. My neighbors, most of whom are aged 65+, and I are all about “not in my backyard.” And we’re not fond of renters in the neighborhood, or the nearby garden homes that wrecked our drainage. Also, kids, get off my lawn! Ahem.

Can’t say I’m surprised by the finding about weddings! Sadly, I’ve had to turn down wedding invites due to cost. If you have a weekend-long black tie affair or a destination wedding, I think you have to expect some of your loved ones will be excluded!

The homeownership study part seems a little misleading though — e study isn’t about countries, but about U.S. states. As those of us who live outside the U.S. know, what happens there doesn’t necessarily happen everywhere. I’d love to see if similar trends apply to Canada, the UK, etc. — places where there hasn’t (yet) been a housing crisis.

“Homeownership kills the labor market, study finds” yes, for the USA, but then they tried to expand the hypothesis to European states and that was, in my opinion, bonkers for the very reason they treated the EU as a single labor marketas the USA, when in fact barrier to movement is not so much in owing a house in a given country, but not knowing the language of another or not having your educational and professional titles recognized there in practice (in theory, yes, it’s in the Eu treaties).

There have been a few weddings in the last couple of years that I haven’t gone to for whatever reason but I always always send a gift. To me it’s not “Oh darn, I’m on the hook for a gift” so much as “I’m sorry I can’t be there for your special and momentous life event but here’s a little token to let you know that I love you and I’m celebrating from afar.” Framing it as “on the hook” strikes me as kind of mean. If you don’t want to send a gift, don’t. What people should really try to avoid is sending a gift and then carrying around a bunch of resentment about it.

Yeah… To be honest the “I didn’t go so I don’t have to buy a gift” mentality really sickens me. That’s fine that the person didn’t go because of whatever reason…but if you’re actually a friend of the person, you should by them a gift. Not because you have to, but because you’re a friend.

One possible reason for the spike in wedding costs is that more young people want to do destination weddings.

I’m actually a big fan of weddings. There are also normally an expensive affair for us, b/c we generally have to travel since we moved away from our respective home states. As a result, if there is a wedding we go, we enjoy the wedding and we try to sneak in seeing other family and friends and the same time.

We actually also use local weddings for a chance to splurge, often choosing to stay at the resort or the hotel where the wedding takes place and making it a little staycation.

I agree, weddings become a huge expense for people in their 20′s and 30′s. It seems like all of a sudden everyone you’re friends with or met in college are getting married and you’re shelling out hundreds for tux rentals, bachelor’s parties, clothes for the rehearsal dinner, gifts for the couple. It almost becomes a game of one-upsmanship where everyone tries to have more activities and chances to get gifts from their friends and family as they can. A friend of mine was asked to go to 2 bachelor parties for the same groom, one of which was a 4-day long weekend in another country!

That happened to me! And the attitude seemed to be “oh, we’ll do the same for you when your turn comes…”

Of course, I’m still not married and I’m not close to these people anymore. I didn’t attend weddings or buy gifts with any thought of reciprocation — but I always thought it was odd that people expected you spend all this money because they did the same for everyone else.

We were invited to FOUR weddings this summer and fall. All involved significant travel and an overnight stay. We attended none, partly due to my husband being in a Master’s program and not wanting to take time away from that. The other part was cost. One of these weddings was in Newport, RI in the summer – very expensive lodging, if you can find it. One other was in a rural area, with few options for lodging. The couple chose to marry in this location; it isn’t either of their home towns. People really need to think more about their guests’ needs when planning.

I don’t care what convention says – I don’t feel inclined to by a gift for a wedding that I can’t attend. I just had my wedding 2 years ago, and I didn’t even know that was convention, but I certainly didn’t expect people to send me gifts if they didn’t come! (A few people did, but I’d say they were in the minority).

Good! The convention is manufactured to force people into always spending more. The “etiquette gurus” tend to work for publications that advertise consumer goods–usually such articles will be surrounded by appropriate ads for “the perfect wedding gift” etc.

Good on you, the expectation of a gift and that you /have/ to spend a couple hundred dollars on a gift even if you are not going to the wedding is insane. It should be a) the thought that counts and b) because you want to give the married couple a gift and not because it’s “expected” of you. And don’t even get me started on spending enough on a wedding that could be a huge down payment on a house, and that guests are required to come in black tie– It should be enough that your friends and relatives want to come and witness the marrage, it’s not like the guests are putting a gun to the couples heads and forcing them to one up their friends just for a damn ego trip. Weddings and the “expectations” I’ve been thrust into go against what i think a wedding should be, and I’m really starting to despise them before I’m even married myself LOL. /rant.

I always carry multiple credit cards, and it has been a lifesaver once or twice! I’ve had a card declined for no fault of my own (made an overseas purchase online, bank thought it was fraud and froze the card). If i didn’t have a second card, I woudln’t have been able to buy enough gas to drive home! I suppose I could have sat in a gas station and called my bank and worked it out, but it seems like it’s a good policy to have a second credit, or at least debit card. Also, if your card of choice is an AMEX or Discover, well, better carry a VISA or some cash for unexpected places that won’t take it.

Unless they make small versions of a birth certificate, who on earth would keep a folded full size sheet of paper in their wallet? I’ll admit to breaking a rule though and keeping my SS card on me. It has just been handy to have on hand for orientation at work. There have also been other occaisions where I needed another form of ID and I’m glad I had it with me.

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